Healthcare research needs more funds: Panel

A parliamentary panel has asked the Centre to increase budgetary allocation for critical healthcare research after it found “huge” mismatch between demand and allocation of funds for schemes of department of health research (DHR).

The panel recommended increased investments in health research to provide affordable and quality healthcare and noted that in the USA, the budget of National Institute of Health, which functions like that of Indian Council of Medical Research under DHR, is $32 billion per year.

The parliamentary panel also supported the DHR’s demand for additional funds to the tune of `835 crore for 2017-18.

“The committee notes that against the 12th Plan Outlay of `10,029 crore, only `3,575.17 crore was allocated to the department at Budget Estimate stage which was further reduced to `3,266.50 crore in the revised estimate,” the panel on Demands for Grants 2017-18 for DHR said.

“The actual expenditure was `3,180.99 crore up to February, 2017. The committee observes that there is a huge mismatch to the tune of `6,762.50 crore between 12th Plan outlay and the RE allocation made to the department,” it said.

Importantly, it stated that to address the high disease burden, the national health research agenda needs to be updated constantly and indigenous health products would need to be developed to combat these challenges.